tartled me, not so much because of its weird appearance as by the
mere fact of its being there. Strangely enough, for a moment it seemed
impossible that I should meet another _avion_. Despite a long
apprenticeship in aviation, in these days when one's mind has only
begun to grasp the fact that the mastery of the air has been
accomplished, the sudden presentation of a bit of evidence sometimes
shocks it into a moment of amazement bordering upon incredulity.

As I watched the big biplane pass, I was conscious of a feeling of
loneliness. I remembered what J. B. had said that morning. There _was_
something unpleasant in the isolation; it made us look longingly down
to earth, wondering whether we shall ever feel really at home in the
air. I, too, longed for the sound of human voices, and all that I
heard was the roar of the motor and the swish of the wind through
wires and struts, sounds which have no human quality in them, and are
no more companionable than the lapping of the waves to a man adrift on
a raft in mid-ocean. Underlying this feeling, and no doubt in part
responsible for it, was the knowledge of the fallibility of that
seemingly perfect mechanism which rode so steadily through the air; of
the quick response that ingenious arrangement of inanimate matter
would make to an eternal and inexorable law if a few frail wires
should part; of the equally quick, but less phlegmatic response of
another fallible mechanism, capable of registering horror, capable--it
is said--of passing its past life in review in the space of a few
seconds, and then--capable of becoming equally inanimate matter.

Luckily nothing of this sort happened, and the feeling of loneliness
passed the moment I came in sight of the long rows of barracks, the
hangars and machine shops of the aviation school. My joy when I saw
them can only be appreciated in full by fellow aviators who remember
the end of their own first long flight. I had been away for years. I
would not have been surprised to find great changes. If the brevet
monitor had come hobbling out to meet me holding an ear trumpet in his
withered hand, the sight would have been quite in keeping with my own
sense of the lapse of time. However, he approached with his ancient
springy, businesslike step, as I climbed down from my machine. I
swallowed to clear the passage to my ears, and heard him say, "Alors
ca va?" in a most disappointingly perfunctory tone of voice.

I nodded.

"Where's your bio